My ‘take’ on the situation – NIKON Z series

Since the recent announcement of the NIKON mirroless cameras, the Z6 & Z7 I’ve read, with a certain amusement, the various on-line/forum/YouTube ‘experts’ and I have to thank the authors – it’s quite amazing just how far from reality people will take the tiniest tit-bits of information.

Aside from The Angry Photographer (TAP), who is a complete card-carying idiot (who owns « at least 300 Nikon lenses » – yeah – of course you do…) and the only person who believes in what he says, most of the commentaries have started off fairly quietly before becomming hugely theoretic and oft-times frankly fantasist – it’s clear that 95% of the people writing A: have little competance to comment, and B: can’t actually write anyway.

A recent « Anonymous post » over on the NIKON RUMURS blog was 100% right – but the forum members then proceeded to tear his comments to shreds.

A popular subject is Nikons choice to equipe the new cameras with just a single memory card slot. To must intelligent photographers, this is a very minor inconvenience – to the forum members this is almost the end of the world. It has to be understood that a large percentage of the forum members don’t actually practice much photography, but are very prolific commentators – so their argument was « oh no, we can’t back up our data in the camera – what happens when I photograph a wedding and the memory card goes bad???? »

Well most, if not all, serious photographers would have a second (or third) camera with them – it’s unlikely that they would rely on a single camera, and it’s far easier to have multiple bodies each with a different lens etc.

The « oversights » from NIKON are listed, page after page of errors – they didn’t include this, they didn’t include that…total rubbish but for the forum members it’s important to show you are up there and Following this nonsense – please don’t ask me why.

One question which seems really obvious to me, but as yet no-one has even asked, let alone tried to answer, is why the new Z series lenses are so expensive?

The existing 50mm f/1.8 AF-S is a perfectly capable lens, sharp, light, etc. and costs 200€ – the new Z series lens with the same optical formula is 679€ – yes, of course, I can use the new one without the FTZ adaptor, but one I have the adaptor I can use it with all my older lenses. The 35mm AF-S is another example – the original AFS costs 489 for the f/1.8 while the Z series equivalent costs 949€

The camera bodies are not, in my opinion, particularly expensive – so are Nikon trying to recup some of their development money in pitching the new lenses at a much higher level?

Gotta go – there are some new comments on the blogs that I’m watching – cheers up a gloomy afternoon!